Monthly Archives: January 2014

The Reason I Owe You $11

After the church, I decided, kind of against Christian's advice, that maybe I should go to the mysterious party after all. (kind of related complaint: it is incredibly hard to buy beer in PA. You have to go to a beer distributor, and even then they won't let you buy less than 24 at a time. Whatever, I thought, I'd just have some to share. And get absolutely hammered besides.) So Christian drops me off there, at the Budd Building, somewhere in a bleak, industrial part of the city. I can't help but think I'm in the absolute wrong place.…

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St. Melba’s Church

After the asylum, my hosts introduced me to the legendary oasis of Wawa, then we continued on to South Philly to see a church, which I know almost nothing about, except that it's in Philadelphia. That being said, it's certainly better than any of the abandoned churches in Buffalo! At least no one has ever done this to me... apparently I still have farther to fall into ignominy. Every time I see an abandoned piano I want to play it... then I wonder if someone would hear the music and decide we were better off caught. This is the kind…

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Hippo Campus

If the last few trips had unusual beginnings, this one was absolutely weird... starting on the bus ride home from Cincinnati, I began to get unsolicited calls from apparent explorers (caller ID blocked, of course) telling me to go to Philly next weekend for some mysterious UER party. Of course, this being the Fuck It Tour, I obliged; the goal, after all, has been to explore a new area every weekend, and meet new people, who might be part of my comeback, and whoever these strange characters were, it seemed as it might be in my best interest to meet…

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Ohio Defiance

As angry as I was about Cincinnati and the missed meet, I knew I had to make something of it and give the reeking armpit of the United States a second chance. This time, with my friend actually in the area, and still having a list of places from the meet just a month ago, I thought maybe we'd be able to follow in their footsteps and at least get to see the same places, even if not actually at the meet. The reality was something entirely different though - one place after another that seemed to be promising was…

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Fluid Dynamics 204

And, just a week after Staten Island, the chance came again! Two noted explorers this time, the legendary NAN, and Buffalo's Zephyr, both active UERers who I'm sure just met up with me to be nice, but still made a good afternoon of it. One of the rules we'd agreed on, which I respect from these people, is that we could only go to places that I've already been to, so I wouldn't release any information on account of them, and so we'd know in advance that they would be places I could get into. With both of them already…

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Call It A Comeback

Between the disastrous start in Cincinnati and a similarly fruitless trip to Binghamton (where at least I had people, but no places to go, and forgot my camera on top of it all), things weren't exactly looking great for my Fuck It Tour by the time I got a last minute invitation to meet a real explorer and check out a few places. Once I was convinced he was more than just a legendary troll, I booked my ticket and took my chances, arriving in New York on one of the coldest mornings of the year, and finding my host…

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